Bonjour
Paris is reserved for morning persons, even though hardly anyone I know are early risers. But I am not a Parisian (at least not yet), and I do not know many natives (again, not yet).
The morning I reserved for the Latin Quarter was a spectacularly sunny one. It was three quarters past nine when I awoke. As it was a Saturday morning, I had a strong inclination to be lazy and took my time to get myself ready for the day ahead. My aunt had left for the Saturday marché.
“The place needs new flowers.” she told me the night before. “Do you want to join me?” Before I could say yes, she continued, “I’ll be going in the morning at 8, it’s supposed to be rain in the afternoon.”
“Oh 8? Maybe next time, I will be going to Gibert Joseph tomorrow.” Frankly, there was no conflict between going to Gibert Joseph and the marché. In reality, my body could not be ready to leave the house by 8 o’clock in the morning. The early-rising side effect of jet lag had already worn off.
“All right then,” answered my aunt. It seemed as if she wanted to say more, as her gently pursed lips suggested, but she stopped there. She knew that the real obstacle to my joining her was 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning (or any morning for that matter), not a bookstore. She understood.
At that point of time, we were still warming up to each other. Despite being relatives, we did not spend enough time with each other to really be too comfortable with each other. My aunt, a cousin of my mother, was in her forties. A very well-maintained mother of two, she was mistress of her household and her husband’s business partner. The couple ran a fashion merchandizing business. How very French. She embodied the dream life I had as a child. My idea of that had changed over time and morphed into something I could not quite describe. Still, I found the situation of my aunt very fantastical.
The water boiled. I could hear the tap dancing of the eggshell on the steel pot as I detect a small crack across the shell. My lack of patience led to retrieve the egg a little too early. The egg white was still too runny when I peeled a fragment of the shell to see. I placed the egg back into the water and turned on the induction stove to the maximum “9” again.
My second dissection proved my impatience again, and I settled for a very soft-boiled egg as part of my Saturday breakfast.
The morning ritual took one and a half hours. Weekends allowed for a slow pace of activities. I set out for my Latin Quarter adventure at a seventeen past eleven.
The sky showed no signs of impending rain. Yet, the temperamental weather of the past two days had left a deep impression of Parisian rain on me, so I brought an umbrella along despite its frumpiness. Somehow it clashed with the image of wandering an artistic neighbourhood.
Ironically, the almost glaring sunshine gave another purpose for the umbrella - shade. Most people, tourists or locals, walked with sunglasses. To use an umbrella seemed too much (in Paris it would be so, in Asia, it would be the norm) and I was already in a coat engineered for arctic expeditions. As you can see, I was a dramatic when it came to handling the weather. However, I succumbed to social pressure and kept my umbrella closed.
Admittedly, the weather was rather pleasant. The scene replicated a postcard image of the Seine. Parisian skies, on a good day, typically consisted of a dreamy blue background and patches white clouds.
A makeshift book stall stood by the Seine. I learnt later that the correct term for such book stalls was “Seine Riverside bookseller” according to travel guides, which emphasized their iconic green metal boxes and their being part of Paris’s artistic heritage. The owners were a couple (or maybe not) in their fifties or sixties. The prices were marked on the plastic covers. Four euros could get you a tasteful copy of Voltaire’s Dictionnarie Philosophique. I had to resist purchasing it as I designated it as an incentive to master French. It is absolutely marvelous how each language is a dimension of literature. I bid the books goodbye and made a promise to see them soon.
Between the Latin Quarter and the book stall stood Île de la Cité on which towered Cathérale Notre Dame de Paris. Despite its exquisite architecture, the long line of tourists decreased its appeal. Like its fellow landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Cathérale Notre Dame was admired externally. I had not found the chance to examine their interiors yet.
Soon enough I reached the Left Bank via Rue du Petit Port. As I was crossing the bridge I wondered where the famous Love Bridge was. It was not until later on a separate occasion that I discovered the famous bridge on a map.
Honestly, I was tempted to consult a map when I was on Île de la Cité. I wanted to know how far I was from my destination. Then I realized I did not exactly have one. Gilbert Joseph was an excuse while the Latin Quarter felt more like a concept. A study of the map would spoil the magic of the experience.
And so the wandering resumed.
The Quarter was a gentrified version of Orwell’s rue du Coq D’or. It had the assortment of Arabian and Italian eateries, with no shortage of crêperies. In fact, there were a number of Shawarma houses which offered crêpes as well. Nutella was the popular spread and only a small number offered my personal favorite Speculoos. In any case I would not be able to enjoy any crêpe since dairy was not in my diet. That limited a lot of French cuisine options from me, which I will document in a later chapter.
Shakespeare and Co. was to my left when I reached the Left Bank. Part of me looked forward to entering it, while another questioned its being another overrated tourist attraction. I had a fear of falling prey to marketing gimmicks. My worship of Wilde (a popular writer) instilled “everything popular is wrong.” into me. And while my choices of cities to live in, namely New York and Paris, would suggest that I had a habit of making mistakes, I still integrated this philosophy in various aspects of life. My dislike of green tea flavoured foods (note, not green tea itself) attested to that.
I did not go into the English bookstore in the end. Especially because I had already visited the store twice (both times briefly) to purchase required texts for my class. The store did not particularly impress me. Perhaps because I did not find English books exotic at all and they were priced quite extraordinarily. Feelings of sentiment for The Strand immediately surfaced. The reality of my being in Paris had not quite settled in yet.
At the same time, Gilbert Joseph was still on my mind. I vaguely recalled its location on Google maps — somewhere on Saint-Michel. My route there included the streets of Arabian, Italian restaurants and French crêperies. These streets also contained an obscene number of tourist souvenir shops. It was unfortunate that the cultural architecture above had to be embellished with vulgar Eiffel Tower refrigerator magnets below.
I encounter a beggar on this route. She was an old hunchback with a walking stick in her right hand and a plastic cup in her left. She had the qualities of a witch from a German fairy tale — Hansel and Gretel to be precise. Moving at an excruciatingly protracted pace, she chanted, “Bonjour Monsieur. Bonjour Madame.” As I passed her, she acknowledged my existence by uttering, “Bonjour Mademoiselle.” I could not react in time to reach into my wallet and hand her some money, for I had been caught in a moral dilemma the instant I took notice of her.
Do I give her money? I was entangled with fear, skepticism, guilt and sympathy. The decision had to be made within footsteps.
I didn’t.
Was it cowardliness? It somehow felt so.
Bookstores
The sight of Gibert Joseph interrupted my thoughts. The rows of “petit prix” books were another reminder for me to grasp French. However, the modern, commercial layout of stationery department, “Papeterie”, housed in a building separate from the books section, evoked disappointment. I had an obsession about notebooks. Having made this trip to a literary haven, I was convinced to hunt for them.
They were right about Paris’s adoration of writers. The Quarter was laced with bookstores.
Gibert Jeune, another major bookstore in the district was even more disappointing. The same 2015 schedule book which was on sale for five euros at Gibert Joseph was still €8,95 at Gibert Jeune. Both stores did not offer the artisan black notebooks that Hemingway and Picasso used.
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